Ten from the Line welcomes comedian Jimmy Tingle

In Lonsesome Dove, Gus McCrae was fond of saying, "The older the violin, the sweeter the music." While McRae wasn't talking about the way things often pan out on Ten from the Line, his point would have been valid.

In the novel "Lonsesome Dove", Gus McRae was fond of saying, "The older the violin, the sweeter the music." While McRae wasn't talking about the way things often pan out on Ten from the Line, his point would have been valid.

In the two-plus years since this online video project was created, we’ve seen former Red Sox pitcher Bill “Spaceman” Lee set the TFL accuracy record with an 8-for-10. He was just shy of his 64th birthday at the time. And one of our few 7-for-10ers is Mark Goddard, Major West from the “Lost in Space” television series. He worked his free throw magic at age 73.

And while he hasn’t reached retirement age (he’s not a state employee), our latest guest, nationally renowned comedian/satirist Jimmy Tingle of Cambridge, is comfortably in the TFL age upper echelon. He turns 57 early next month.

At Fall River’s Durfee High School last Saturday to perform at a fundraiser for the school’s Nagle Auditorium renovation, Tingle was more than happy to visit the Luke Urban Field House to shoot his 10 free throws. “I shoot around with my son quite a bit,” said Tingle, who has appeared on “The Tonight Show” and “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” and had a regular humorist/commentator role on “60 Minutes II”.

“We have a park right across the street from our house. I don’t really play that much anymore. You know how it is. You get into your 50s, the knees start to go, the ankles start to go, the body starts to fall apart. But one thing I can do, I can usually shoot set shots.”

Tingle speakeths the truth.

While we won’t tell you precisely how he did, we can tell you Tingle is a gym rat at heart, one with an appreciation for Massachusetts high school basketball as well as Durfee’s rich hoops history. A starting guard at Cambridge Latin High School in 1973 (before the merger with Rindge Tech), Tingle was surprised to learn about how Durfee basketball has struggled in recent years. On the way out of the field house, he stopped for a couple of minutes to study the many championship banners on the south wall.

By then, his absence from the auditorium was starting to cause concern for his Durfee host, vice-principal Paul Coogan. Tingle and Coogan were buddies during their college days at Southeastern Massachusetts University, where they played frequent pickup basketball games at the Tripp Athletic Center. It was Coogan who lured Tingle to Durfee to perform “Jimmy Tingle for President: The Funniest Campaign in History.”

Learn more about Mr. Tingle at www.jimmytingle.com. You can follow him on Facebook and Twitter.